[HN Gopher] The Style Guide for America's Highways
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The Style Guide for America's Highways
Author : jonathanmkeegan
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-01-11 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.beautifulpublicdata.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.beautifulpublicdata.com)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Being in Texas and of a certain age, I really only recognize
| Clearview. When I went to CA and PA, I saw the standard font and
| thought it looked archaic in a cool, retro way, especially the
| "g".
|
| I wonder if there is a concise summary of differences between the
| federal and various state guides.
| sofixa wrote:
| Relevant video on why American road signs are so different than
| basically the rest of the world: https://youtu.be/Wzr0GYfRsKI
| alar44 wrote:
| I worked as a project manager for a telco construction company
| years ago and learning how to set up road constructions signs and
| warnings and whatnot was almost like learning a programming
| language. There are so many rules dictating how and where to put
| signs depending on speed limit, number of lanes, intersection
| type, etc etc. Then you'd send your plans to the DoT and they'd
| either approve or reject it with very little information on what
| you did wrong. It really was the most difficult part of the job.
| spiralx wrote:
| Smaller than the 1,509 pages in total for the UK's traffic signs
| manual:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-man...
|
| That's without various design specs, such as for the Transport
| font used on signs:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-wor...
| jonathanmkeegan wrote:
| Driving across America, you will encounter a wide variety of
| cultures, landscapes, people and animals. But the one consistent
| thing that will stay the same from Maine to California are the
| signs you pass on the highway. That is because America's roads
| and highways have a big, fat style guide.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| First time I see someone post a link to their own post and then
| post a top-level comment that literally quotes the first
| paragraph from that post. Strikes me as quite spammy, possibly
| automated. Flagged.
| jonathanmkeegan wrote:
| Hi there! I'm the OP. Just trying to share my story. Not
| automated! Sorry if it came across as spammy.
| aeharding wrote:
| MUTCD is great if you're in a car on a grade separated highway.
| But it's staggeringly awful for when you're outside of a car.
|
| It could even be argued that the MUTCD is awful for driving in an
| urban area. MUTCD designs streets similarly to rural highways,
| and this can create conditions where people speed when they need
| to be driving slowly, because the design of the street doesn't
| reflect the speed the sign says you need to be driving.
|
| The MUTCD needs a different approach to urban streets. One that
| creates an environment where making a mistake doesn't lead to
| death. One where the design of the street reflects the posted
| speed limit. It will make the experience better for everyone.
|
| https://americawalks.org/how-the-mutcd-creates-unsafe-condit...
|
| https://nacto.org/program/modernizing-federal-standards/
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-05/it-s-time...
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| There are also other issues - for example, MUTCD doesn't allow
| for multiple languages on street signs.
|
| This is an issue in New York's Chinatown for example, where old
| bilingual street signs that need to be replaced have to be
| replaced with English-only signs.
| noirdujour wrote:
| > MUTCD designs streets similarly to rural highways, and this
| can create conditions where people speed when they need to be
| driving slowly, because the design of the street doesn't
| reflect the speed the sign says you need to be driving.
|
| Not Just Bikes covers this shortfall in a video on speed
| limits[1], and it really opened my eyes on the relationship
| between rules and actual behavior.
|
| Essentially, speed limit signs affect driving speeds slightly,
| but the street design is important. Wide, open, straight roads
| naturally prompt drivers to drive to highway speeds, even in
| more suburb areas. It's amazing how often I check the
| speedometer and find that I'm driving much more than the posted
| speed limit when following the flow of traffic.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
| clairity wrote:
| my dream: urban roads (and parking) underground and multimodal
| streets above-ground severely road-dieted, with ample trees and
| micromobility lanes along them _all_. trees provide shade,
| reduces the heat island effect, reduces noise pollution (a
| bit), reduces air pollution (a bit), preserves soil and helps
| it hold more water, and overall reduces stress for pedestrians.
| adding mixed-use everywhere, with smaller pedestrian
| /micromobility alleys for accessibility, means people have
| somewhere to walk to rather than hopping into their cars for
| everything.
|
| then you don't need to rely so much on speed limits, signs, and
| signals, because you've segregated (most of) the cars from
| people.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's a beautiful dream but we can barely manage upkeep in our
| existing road network, which is mostly just layers of dirt
| and asphalt. If we need to maintain tunnel systems I imagine
| the maintenance goes up by at least an order of magnitude.
| danny_codes wrote:
| The great part is that we don't need fancy underground
| roads at all because trains and subways exist!
|
| So we can just do all the multi-modal mobility stuff and
| just skip the car-tunnel part
| clairity wrote:
| japan has an extensive network of tunnels and manages them
| just fine. and it's not a money problem. california, for
| instance, is the 5th largest economy in the world (~$3.6T),
| with greater LA ~$1.2T and the bay area ~$1T of that. cars
| have great utility, and while the economic benefits of
| roads/streets more than offset their cost _in urban areas_
| , a better mix of transportation reduces the amount of
| roads & streets we need overall (not to mention needing to
| repair them less often when usage is lower), mitigating the
| cost issue a bit.
|
| people react viscerally to moving away from a sole reliance
| on cars, but most people intuitively enjoy human-centered
| environments more than car-centered ones. i wouldn't
| advocate taking away cars, but rather providing a more
| human-centered environment that de-emphasizes cars in our
| lives so that we can better build relationships and
| communities with each other.
| CHB0403085482 wrote:
| See you in /transport/
|
| https://www.youtube.com/notjustbikes
| bombcar wrote:
| Direct link to the MUTCD: https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/index.htm
|
| https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/pdfs/2009r1r2r3/pdf_index.htm
|
| https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/pdfs/2009r1r2r3/mutcd2009r1r2r3ed...
| dv_dt wrote:
| Individual states also have guidelines too (probably mostly
| aligned w/ the federal). It reminds me of the artist who wanted
| to correct a misleading fwy sign, pulled the style guide, made
| the sign and put it up.
|
| https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-servi...
| johnohara wrote:
| The Artist: Richard Ankrom https://ankrom.org/
|
| The Public Service: Guerrilla Public Service 2011
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clgl63CWOkM
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think many US highway signs are too wordy. Seems that European
| signs are more iconic. They are faster to recognize and more
| pleasant to look at but maybe take a bit more education to
| understand. US driver education is woeful by most other first-
| world standards, so maybe that's part of why we seem to need so
| many signs that explain things in words.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm not sure what US driver education has to do with it, or on
| what basis you consider it "woeful".
|
| But I've driven in both the US and Europe, and while a lot of
| the European signs are easy to figure out, a lot of them seem
| not only non-intuitive but also inconsistent, as well as
| difficult to read.
|
| For example, "no stopping" is a red circle with a blue
| background and an X, while "no parking" is the same red circle
| with the same blue background and a slash, or half the X. Not
| only is all of this totally arbitrary, but there's almost
| _zero_ contrast between the red and blue, so the opposite of
| being fast to recognize, or pleasant.
|
| And then a slash in some cases means "end of" (end of no
| passing zone) but in other cases it means "no" (no left turn).
| So it essentially means _both_ "allowed" and "not allowed", but
| I guess it's based on the color or orientation or something of
| the slash, or multiple thin slashes vs one big thick one?
|
| I find myself very much preferring the help of "wordiness" in
| this case. The top priority while driving is clarity in
| messaging, not economy of space. What the US does, which is
| actually to combine symbols in many cases with text, gives both
| quick recognition _and_ unambiguous information.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Basically, the language is as follows:
|
| A red border on the sign is the beginning of something "not
| allowed" (no parking) or of some limitation (maximum speed
| limit 50 km/h). Those signs are round.
|
| The limitations are lifted when you see a similar black and
| white sign, usually barred.
|
| If the sign is triangular with a red border, it means some
| danger is coming up.
|
| If the sign is a blue background (only, no red border) it's
| an obligation to do something (must turn right).
|
| Square blue background is usually some kind of "information".
| Like "parking". You don't _have_ to park. But you may.
| Sometimes, this information may have other implications, like
| "one way road, going your way". You don't have to keep
| moving. But you know no one will be coming from the front.
| Swizec wrote:
| > I'm not sure what US driver education has to do with it, or
| on what basis you consider it "woeful".
|
| I got my driver's license in EU first (Slovenia). Then had to
| pass it again in USA (San Francisco).
|
| The US test was a joke. No parallel parking portion, no
| highway portion, no complex intersection portion, no hill
| start portion (in SF!!!), no first aid portion, no ... many
| things were missing actually. But I did have to show hand
| signals!? Lol what.
|
| The US test took 10 minutes and we drove around the block.
| The EU test took an hour, came with mandatory 30 hours of
| licensed instructor training, and the instructor had to
| certify on pain of losing their license that I spent at least
| 3 hours driving at night during training.
|
| Nowadays the EU license, at least in Slovenia, requires
| passing a "stunt driving" course within 2 years of getting
| your license. It's been decided knowing how to control a skid
| in icy/snowy conditions is mandatory, for example.
|
| > a lot of them seem not only non-intuitive but also
| inconsistent
|
| There is a visual language you have to learn as part of the
| licensing process. You spend about 5 hours of classroom
| instruction before even getting your permit to start learning
| how to drive. There _is_ a logic behind how the signs are
| structured and you don 't have to memorize.
|
| Different countries do use different signs but the
| iconography is very similar for the most part.
|
| > The top priority while driving is clarity in messaging, not
| economy of space
|
| I find the EU signs faster to recognize because pictograms
| are easy. I've got most US signs memorized by now so they
| work like pictograms. But when you do have to _read_ the
| sign, takes a lot of attention away from driving imo.
| rascul wrote:
| The states vary, but when I was 16 in Maryland I had to do
| classroom training for some number of hours, then when I
| got my learner's permit I had to do some number of hours of
| driving with an instructor, then some number of hours
| driving with a licensed adult. Only after all that, and I
| think some minimum time limit, could I take the 20 question
| multiple choice test and a parking test to get my driver's
| license.
| Swizec wrote:
| I'm sure countries in EU vary as well. You probably need
| less training to successfully drive in southern Spain
| than you do above the arctic circle in Finland.
|
| I think part of the difference may also be that in USA
| you need to drive to participate in society (fundamental
| right -ish) whereas in much of Europe driving is seen as
| a privilege, albeit a very useful privilege.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > I find myself very much preferring the help of "wordiness"
| in this case.
|
| When one is driving at 100km/h, "wordiness" is not really
| that useful.
|
| I much rather prefer signage in Europe. Colours are
| consistent with the meanings (red is always "forbidden" or
| "not allowed", whereas blue and white means the opposite).
| Same goes with geometry. There is little to no need for any
| more descriptive signage.
|
| In the US, I find myself having to read three line signs
| almost constantly, some of them comically complex. There is
| even a joke in Futurama about that:
| https://youtu.be/-sHKlVRnfag
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _When one is driving at 100km /h, "wordiness" is not
| really that useful._
|
| Really don't know what you mean. Signs are large and
| visible from a long distance away. You've got plenty of
| time to read, and we're talking about short phrases like
| "EXIT ONLY" or "TOLL PLAZA 2 MILES". Not paragraphs of
| literature.
| cesarb wrote:
| > For example, "no stopping" is a red circle with a blue
| background and an X, while "no parking" is the same red
| circle with the same blue background and a slash, or half the
| X. Not only is all of this totally arbitrary
|
| It makes sense if you think of "parking" as sort of a "long
| term stopping". That is: no stopping at all (includes no
| parking), short stops only (stopping allowed but not
| parking), stopping fully allowed (both short stops and
| parking).
| rubylark wrote:
| Do you have examples of wordy US signs that are only symbolic
| in the EU system? All of the ones I see on the article are
| either city names or pedestrian signs with complex instructions
| that I don't think could be conveyed effectively in only
| symbolic form.
|
| The ones I can think of that are words only that might have a
| better symbolic notation are Dead End, No Outlet, and No
| Passing Zone.
| rmnwski wrote:
| Here you can find the German traffic signs for example.
| Basically all of them are pictographic:
| https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/verkehrszeichen/
| alocasia-1 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_traffic_sign
|
| A handful of good comparison examples there - notably no
| pedestrian/no vehicle signs, which use clear imagery in
| Europe
| playingalong wrote:
| Not the OP, but let me try.
|
| Some like "cross only at cross walks" or "no pedestrian
| crossing" are not a sign at all in EU. They are either
| implied by general traffic rules, or implied by traffic rules
| for given road category, or enforced with infrastructure.
|
| "One lane bridge" EU has specific signs for lane cross
| section (not for bridges specifically). "Pavement ends" I
| even consider funny. What comes next after that? "A meadow
| starts?"
| jetbalsa wrote:
| "Pavement ends" normally means the road is going to be a
| dirt road or gravel road. Pretty common in rural areas
| yamtaddle wrote:
| "Slow the fuck down now, speeder--yes, you!--or be very
| unhappy when, a few seconds from now, you try to brake on
| gravel at high speed and spin out"
| karaterobot wrote:
| Depending on where you are in the U.S., a "cross only at
| crosswalks" sign is necessary because all intersections are
| considered to act as crosswalks even when there are no
| solid white lines. Pedestrians can still cross, and
| vehicles should yield the right of way. That sign could
| indicate an exception to the rule, due to some dangerous,
| non-obvious condition that makes it unsafe for pedestrians
| to cross the road.
| cameldrv wrote:
| It's probably more that the U.S. is mostly monolingual, but in
| Europe you can drive a few hours and the main language can
| change multiple times.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is entirely it - and the reason that EU stop signs say
| STOP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_sign#Europe
| inciampati wrote:
| It's also dramatically more efficient and safe to have a
| quickly readable visual symbol. Maybe that's just my
| opinion but it seems reasonable to assume it factored into
| the design.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| There's also the fact that it's understandable when
| you're looking at it the wrong way. It's useful to gauge
| who should stop and who has right of way.
|
| For example, in France (and most of Europe, I think), the
| default is for traffic coming from the right to have
| right of way. So if you're coming from the left and see
| the back of the sign, you know you don't have to yield.
| _benedict wrote:
| The U.K. is even more monolingual and still uses icons for
| the obvious UX benefit of faster recognition with less
| distraction from the road.
| lang_agnostic wrote:
| I'm quite surprised but how large and extensive this guide is.
|
| As someone who learned to drive in Europe I've always been
| extremely confused by the signage and road layout of American
| roads. There is a pretty big difference in quality between state
| roads and federal roads. The former seem to have no coherent
| style, layout or identity while the latter seem pretty
| consistent. Given the above documents I can see there is a
| consistent style but the style does not seem to translate to a
| consistent user experience.
|
| The three things that stand out to me are the amount of text on
| each sign, the lack of standardized rule about entries and
| exists, and the lack of road markings, specially at
| intersections.
|
| The first one isn't necessarily a big problem but it's very weird
| to have all this text when you could have instead a very
| recognizable sign that you can understand from afar (the one way
| sign is a great example), instead of a white sign with black text
| that you can only read once you're close to it and only
| understand if you know English.
|
| The second one makes highway layout extremely confusing and, at
| least for me, feel dangerous and stressful. Some Signs can tell
| you to take an exit with make 20m of notice and it's a 90deg
| right turn and you also need to go from 120 kmph to 30 in that
| span. The reduced speed sign is only visible after you've turned
| so if you dont know the area you're almost always going too fast.
| Because it's a 90deg turn with trees in the sides you can't
| anticipate what the traffic is like after the turn. If you know
| the area you probably have no problem handling this situation,
| but driving there for the first time feels like driving through a
| minefield. There are other instances of this with left exits,
| overtaking from both sides, turn right on red, stop sights
| everywhere, no priority system, and more.
|
| The last one is incredibly frustrating when you come from Europe
| because over there, most intersections have redundant signage and
| markings. Intersections have street lights that tell you where to
| go, the road layout is advertised on a sign well in advance, and
| the paint on the road tells you how to turn and where to stop and
| even indicates speed limits or directions. Intersections in
| americas provide no such affordances. Intersections are basically
| a free for all between the incoming trafic, the people turning
| right on red and the pedestrians. I was expecting a lot more from
| a country which is built for cars.
|
| It feels like roads are built for cars but not for drivers.
| [deleted]
| xxpor wrote:
| >Some Signs can tell you to take an exit with make 20m of
| notice and it's a 90deg right turn and you also need to go from
| 120 kmph to 30 in that span.
|
| There should be a sign for this situation, for example:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6277564,-122.3289325,3a,73.1...
|
| Also FWIW:
| https://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part2/part2c.htm#table2C...
|
| Europe does tend to have better signage in intersections. But
| the concept of a national speed limit and then not marking the
| speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead. How are you
| supposed to know what it is if say you just rented a car from
| the airport?
|
| The other thing that kills me is not using a different color
| for separating lanes that run in the same direction vs
| different directions (white vs yellow in the US) How do you
| know at a glance if a road is one way?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > But the concept of a national speed limit and then not
| marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead.
|
| Yeah. Have you driven in France? On regular roads, there's no
| "national speed limit". Depending on the department, it can
| be 80 or 90 km/h.
|
| > How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just
| rented a car from the airport?
|
| Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the
| law).
|
| > How do you know at a glance if a road is one way?
|
| If there are only two lanes, you look at the line on the left
| border of the road. If the line is continuous, both lanes go
| the same way. If it's dashed or there's no line (and your
| side doesn't have one either) you're on a two-way road.
|
| If there are multiple lanes, there will be a double
| continuous line separating the ways. The double line can
| sometimes appear on two-lane roads, it always means the road
| is two-way.
|
| Yellow markings exist, they usually mean road-work /
| temporary signaling.
|
| Best rule of thumb: if you're not clearly on a highway, it's
| very likely a two-way road. Clearly means there's no other
| separate set of lanes close by. We don't have as much space
| as in the US where the lanes going the other way are so far
| away you can barely see them.
| dmd wrote:
| > Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the
| law).
|
| I got a parking ticket once in a place that had parking
| signs and a parking meter. Turned out _that particular_
| parking meter was only for cars with a specific permit. How
| could I have known that? Because there was supposed to be a
| painted 1 " green circle around its base. Even if I had
| known what that meant, the circle had worn away probably
| years prior. No, there was no mention of these circles or
| their meaning on any of the parking signs.
| ghaff wrote:
| Urban street parking in particular can have really
| confusing signage with all sorts of conditions and
| exceptions. And, especially where parking is really
| tight, I often find that I feel I'm missing something if
| there's actually an open space.
| xxpor wrote:
| >Nul ne doit ignorer la loi (no one may be ignorant of the
| law).
|
| Sure, but humans aren't clairvoyant. You can make the
| effort to look it up, or the road authority can just put up
| some basic signs.
| eCa wrote:
| While (as a European) I agree with your point regarding
| speed signs, I think an important point is that there are
| plenty of traffic laws that differs (even) between EU
| countries. So when going driving in a foreign country one
| really should look up at least basic rules beforehand,
| and speed limits will most likely be front and center.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I agree with you, but that's how things work over here.
|
| To stay on the topic of speed limits, there's a national
| speed limit for towns / cities, 50 kmph. It's usually not
| posted as such, but there being a sign with a town name
| means you must observe that.
|
| Other peculiarities you have to know: when you enter a
| town, there may be a different speed limit posted than
| the national limit, typically 30 kmph, very rarely 70. It
| matters if the speed limit sign is physically attached to
| the name sign, or if it stands on its own. In the former
| case, it means that's the speed limit for all the streets
| of the town. If not, it's the regular limit, meaning
| until the first intersection, when the default one comes
| in effect.
|
| The signs are otherwise identical.
| gpvos wrote:
| I've always seen national speed limit signs at the exit of
| airports, similar to the signs you see at national borders.
| Here's the one at the exit of Schiphol:
| https://goo.gl/maps/PD6jvvpsDgV3Rwq97
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >But the concept of a national speed limit and then not
| marking the speed limit when it's in effect seems brain dead.
| How are you supposed to know what it is if say you just
| rented a car from the airport?
|
| By learning the traffic rules before you rent a car, how else
| would you know what else is different than what you are used
| to?
|
| Not marking the national default speed limit is done to limit
| the amount of signs
| dylan604 wrote:
| > https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6277564,-122.3289325,3a,73.
| 1...
|
| I wonder if the MUTCD has a section on keeping the graffiti
| consistent nationally as well.
| munch117 wrote:
| > The other thing that kills me is not using a different
| color for separating lanes that run in the same direction vs
| different directions (white vs yellow in the US) How do you
| know at a glance if a road is one way?
|
| I agree completely, I've lived with it all my life and I
| don't understand it either. How you know? You don't, always.
| When in doubt, keep right.
|
| 50 years ago my dad had an accident precisely on account of
| this. He got confused about what stretch of road he was on,
| changed lanes into oncoming traffic, and hit a truck head on.
|
| Good thing he was driving a Volvo. He bruised his knee.
| gpvos wrote:
| In Europe, the lane to your left is in principle _always_
| oncoming traffic, unless you see a separate road to your
| left with a bit of grass in between. Or at least there will
| be a continuous instead of a dashed line.
| munch117 wrote:
| That means you have to look in two places, correlate the
| information and make a deduction. I would prefer a style
| of line that is immediately recognisable on its own.
| philwelch wrote:
| Turning right on red is the one thing I'll defend here. You can
| only turn right on red after coming to a complete stop, and you
| have to yield to any traffic (including pedestrian traffic)
| before you make the turn. Given those restrictions, it's
| strictly an improvement as far as traffic flow is concerned.
|
| Totally agree with you on exits though, especially left exits.
| Since moving to Texas I've become a big fan of frontage roads,
| but not everyplace has the room for that.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| I'd be happy if people even stopped at STOP signs - the
| number of idiots who think the law doesn't apply to them at
| the STOP signs around our way is stunning. A kid was killed a
| year or so back because some teenager blew through the
| intersection without checking.
|
| As for right-on-red, I think (as a Brit) it's awesome, but I
| don't think I've ever seen a single person come to a complete
| stop before going right, in the 20 years I've lived here. At
| best, it's slow-down-while-I-check.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Those are some of the most routinely and carelessly broken of
| all driving rules, which is really saying something. Being a
| pedestrian in a large city that allows right on red is scary
| as shit, I've had more close calls that way than everything
| else combined. The only thing that comes _close_ is
| uncontrolled crosswalks across four lanes. Which also should
| not exist.
| shagie wrote:
| A pair of old HN articles on Clearview (the font):
|
| The feds are killing off Clearview, the new highway sign font -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11039770 (29 comments) --
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/4/10919686/clearview-highway...
|
| America's Sudden U-Turn on Highway Fonts -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985709 (17 comments) --
| http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/01/official-united-state...
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(page generated 2023-01-11 23:00 UTC)